McCain's dog whistle politics

Via Think Progress

Yesterday in an foreign policy address in Los Angeles, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) called for the United States to create and lead a “League of Democracies” in order to “harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests.”

Numerous media outlets interpreted McCain’s speech as a call for “cooperation” and “collaboration” with allies and the rest of the world, “drawing a sharp contrast to the past eight years under President Bush.” But last night on Fox News, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer revealed the true meaning behind McCain’s “League of Democracies”:

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, I like the idea of the league of democracies, and only in part because I and others had proposed it about six years ago. What I like about it, it’s got a hidden agenda. It looks as if it’s all about listening and joining with allies, all the kind of stuff you’d hear a John Kerry say, except that the idea here, which McCain can’t say, but I can, is to essentially kill the U.N.

I'm guessing Krauthammer's neoconservative "league of democracies" would look something like the Delian League under the control of Athens.

At its height the Delian League numbered some two hundred members which met annually on Delos. Athens was its undisputed leader and gradually used the alliance as a springboard for its own imperial ambitions. By 454, when the League's treasury was transferred to Athens and used to fund monuments of imperial splendor such as the Parthenon, it had become an empire in all but name. Five years later a permanent peace was made with the Persians and its very reason for existing was no longer valid, but by then most of the alliance had already lost its autonomy to Athens.